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The Soldiers’ Mothers human rights group and Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper are being sued for damaging the professional reputation of a St. Petersburg military unit for publicizing cases of St. Petersburg recruits being involved in an alleged prostitution racket. The hearings were held at the Kuibyshevsky Federal Court on Thursday behind closed doors and will be resumed on Monday. The non-governmental organization and the newspaper — which may have to pay 2 million rubles ($85,000) in damages — insist they have enough evidence to force the entire top brass of the corps to resign. |
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NO STRINGS ATTACHED
Grigory Dukor / Reuters
China’s Lu Sui competes during the qualification competition at the World Cup in Artistic Gymnastics in Moscow on Thursday. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s trip to Paris this week for a two-day visit will be watched closely for the answers that it might provide to a vexing question: Just who is the country’s most important figure when it comes to foreign policy? As is the case on the domestic front, there has been no clear indication yet of who will set the tone in the country’s foreign relations after Putin was replaced in the Kremlin by his hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev.
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The coach of St. Petersburg’s FC Zenit, Dutchman Dick Advocaat, who led the soccer club to victory in the UEFA Cup two weeks ago, was granted the title of Honored Citizen of the city on Wednesday. Deputies at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly took the decision to honor Advocaat with the title within a day of the victory. |
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Despite its ambitious, sport-inspired title and then nickname that calls it “a parade of winners,” the Musical Olympus Festival is not so straightforward upon closer examination. |
All photos from issue.
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City Hall has announced that it will start offering rent concessions to “socially significant” businesses. On Tuesday, the City Property Management Committee (KUGI) announced that new rules on the rental of city property would be coming into effect. Information on every premises available to rent must be given to the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade (CERPPiT), which will decide which businesses it would be most appropriate to open there. Grocery stores and food shops that don’t sell any alcohol will be given priority, along with companies providing general services (such as hairdressers, tailors and drycleaners), as officials have classified these businesses as “socially significant. |
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 The cost of renting out-of-town cottages (dachas) in popular areas surrounding St. Petersburg for the summer has grown by between 50 and 100 percent this year. |
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Oil Blast Kills Worker MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — An explosion at a Russian oil refinery early Thursday morning killed at least one worker and injured four more, regional authorities said. The blast occurred at Surgutneftegaz’s Kirishinefteorgsintez refinery near St. Petersburg, the Leningrad region administration said in a statement on its web site. Operations at the refinery resumed following the fire and fuel supplies won’t be disrupted, the administration said. “We’re trying to figure out what happened,” Surgut spokesman Alexei Artemenko said by phone from Surgut, Siberia, where the company is based. “Call back in three hours, it’s lunch time. |
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 With the local restaurant and catering industry continuing to boom, hotels and eateries are increasingly discerning in their demands for ingredients, both in range and quality, while foreign food brands are devising new means to promote their products on the local market. |
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Banks in St. Petersburg and the northwest region are trying to make loans more accessible to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). At the end of last year and beginning of this year, Bank St. Petersburg, KIT Finance and subdivisions of Promsviazbank and Alphabank launched loan programs for SMEs and, during the first quarter of 2008, 55 banks and subsidiaries operating in the northwest region gave SMEs 64. |
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 Oil prices at the current high levels take us into a new world. We are now entering the break point, where the question is not only “How high can the price go?” but also “What will be the response?” Is this the point at which oil begins to lose its almost total domination in transport? Yes, the current high oil price may be a de- mand shock triggered by what had been several years of excellent global economic growth and thus more benign than supply shocks caused by 1970s-style disruptions. |
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There were a number of noteworthy foreign policy events last week. Mayor Yury Luzhkov announced that Sevastopol is not Ukrainian but Russian territory, and the State Duma came to the defense of Arnold Meri, a former high-ranking official in Estonia’s Communist Party who has been charged in Tallinn with genocide for his role in deporting civilians to Siberia following World War II. |
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 U.S. vocalist Jennifer Davis, who has spent the past eight years in St. Petersburg singing with two local bands, the St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review, and her own J.D. and the Blenders, will perform farewell concerts with both bands this week and next, before she leaves for the U. |
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Jennifer Davis, who worked her last shift as DJ Freakadelka at Datscha on Monday, continues to perform her farewell concerts, with both the St. |
 Cobblestone streets, ochre roofs and a fortified castle are typical ingredients of medieval towns across Europe. Weekenders drive out to them for brunch, while foreign tourists obediently climb their towers and purchase yet another refrigerator magnet. This could have been a cozy retirement plan for Vyborg, a town on the Gulf of Finland that was involved in a tug-of-war between Sweden and Russia for 300 years and was consequently involved in some of the world’s largest naval battles. |
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 The Goethe Institute’s project, “German-Russian Authors’ Meeting,” this week brought to St. Petersburg the Noble-prize winning writer, Guenther Grass, for the second year running, along with five other German contemporary writers. |
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If you haven’t made a trip to Loft Proekt “Etazhi” (Floors Loft Project) yet — or indeed been able to locate the hidden-away exhibition and events space — now is the time to seek it out. In celebration of the complex’s anniversary on Monday, its flagship exhibition space Globe Gallery will debut a new exhibition by celebrated Russian artist Sergey Shutov entitled “Sniper.” Shutov, whose works typically involve video and mixed media, was one of the artists chosen to represent Russia at the Venice Biennale in 2001, where he showed “Abacus,” an installation of 40 automated, praying figures, dressed in the same black robes, kneeling and bowing to the ground and reciting prayers from different religions, in different languages. |
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 Catriona Kelly’s new book, “Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890-1991,” offers the most comprehensive history yet of the life of Russian children in the modern period. |
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Àë÷íîñòü: avarice If expats want to understand the country they're living in, they need to understand what is deemed right and wrong in the local culture. And if they want to fit in, they have to get with the program — do what's right and don't do what's wrong. Of course, that isn't to say that all the natives in your adopted country are with the program. For example, traditionally one of the great wrongs in Russian culture is àë÷íîñòü (avarice, greed). But as I look at the mansions going up on Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse, the six-figure cars and seven-figure bling, I'd say that a lot of locals have forgotten No. 6 on the list of ñåìü ñìåðòíûõ ãðåõîâ (seven deadly sins). |
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 Three comedians sitting round a table commenting on newspaper headlines is nothing out of the ordinary in Britain and the United States, but it is a tiny revolution on Channel One, where purse-lipped Yekaterina Andreyeva gives us the nightly news with a heavy Kremlin slant. |
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Carpisa // 44B Shlapernaya Ulitsta // Tel: 273 5813 // Open daily 12 p.m. until 11 p.m. // Dinner for two without alcohol 2,900 rubles ($122) Descend the stairs of number 44B Shlapernaya and the rugged unconventional decor may well make you think that you have just stepped into Aladdin’s Cave. The pale stone walls are covered with tiny magical little lights in multiple colors and various shapes. The theme is continued along the bar and the walls and is added to by low hanging lamps. On one side of the restaurant there are several alcoves, which provide slightly more privacy from the rest of the room and enhance the cave-like feeling of the place. |
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 Many of us who grew up watching television in the 1960s and ‘70s have fond if vague memories of “Speed Racer.” Those big-eyed characters (Trixie! Speed! Racer X!), their mouths never quite moving in sync with the dialogue; those bright colors and semiabstract backgrounds; those endless, episodic story lines. |
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PARIS — Food prices will remain high over the next decade even if they fall from current records, meaning millions more risk further hardship or hunger, the OECD and the UN’s FAO food agency said in a report published on Thursday. Beyond stating the immediate need for humanitarian aid, the international bodies suggested wider deployment of genetically modified crops and a rethink of biofuel programs that guzzle grain which could otherwise feed people and livestock. |
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ROME — Italians have belatedly realised that Silvio Berlusconi’s crackdown on illegal immigrants could deprive them of hundreds of thousands of foreigners who clean their homes and look after their children and elderly relatives. |
 JERUSALEM — Israel was abuzz with speculation on Thursday after the country’s defence minister warned he would force early elections if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert does not resign over graft allegations. “What does all this mean? Very simple: Elections in November. |
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SYDNEY — An Australian Muslim group charged Wednesday that a Sydney council’s refusal to allow an Islamic school to be set up in its area was a “victory for racism”. |
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MOSCOW — Russia recorded a 2-1 win in a Euro 2008 warm-up match with Serbia played in the German town of Burghausen on Wednesday. Recently crowned UEFA Cup winners Zenit St Petersburg’s marksman Pavel Pogrebnyak and Spartak Moscow striker Roman Pavlyuchenko scored one apiece for Russia, while Hertha Berlin striker Marko Pantelic was on target for Serbia. |
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